And thus a collection of fabulous jewels, culled piece by piece by her father-in-law’s discerning eyes, and worth one lakh of rupees, came to six year old Sarada Sundari.
Digambari’s self-castigation grew in intensity with the passing years, almost becoming a religion with her. Her health started failing rapidly but she would neither allow doctors to approach her nor change her way of living. She died suddenly, two days after the death of her fourth son Bhupendranath. The Samachar Darpan carried a report of the double tragedy on 26 January 1839: On Saturday, the nineteenth of January, Babu Dwarkanath Tagore’s thirteen-year-old son, a boy of many virtues, passed away. And two days later his wife followed her offspring to the other world.
Dwarkanath performed his wife’s last rites with the splendour and ceremony owing to a woman who had died leaving behind a husband of his wealth and standing, and three healthy sons. And, for once, he obeyed the dictates of the priests down to the last detail. Daan was given away in mountains. A thousand Brahmins were fed. Finally, when everything was done, even the annual shraddha concluded, Dwarkanath decided to make a trip to England.
Dwarkanath, who believed that British rule was, by and large, beneficial for his people, wanted to examine the country for himself. Once there, he made an important discovery. The Englishman in England, he saw, was quite different from his counterpart in India. He found himself being treated, not as a strange species from a nether world (which would have fitted in with his expectations) but as an equal – even a superior. He was feted and entertained by nobility, visited by famous men and women and even given an audience by Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria. In his brocade robes, priceless jamawar shawls, ropes of pearls and jewels flashing from his chest and turban, he was a fine figure of a man and commanded respect wherever he went. Indeed, many were convinced that he was an oriental monarch and it was thus that the title ‘Prince’ began preceding his name – an appellation that clung to it even after his return to India.
He received a tumultuous welcome from his countrymen for he had effectively proved that one could return alive from across the ‘Black Water’. But the priesthood frowned on him more fiercely than ever and, in their eyes, he became a confirmed exile from the caste hierarchy into which he had been born. This, despite the fact that he hadn’t given up the customary forms of worship even during his sojourn in England. He had had one of the rooms of the house in which he lived swabbed with earth from the holy Ganga he had carried with him. Here he performed his jap and puja with scrupulous regularity. Once, he had kept the Duchess of Sutherland, who was paying him a visit, waiting for over an hour because he was in the middle of his jap.
But the hostility of the priests did not faze Dwarkanath one bit. What did concern him, though, were the strange propensities of his eldest son. The five generations of Tagores, from their founder Panchanan Kushari, had displayed a remarkable talent for identifying opportunity and seizing it to achieve fame and fortune – a talent which had turned to genius in Dwarkanath. Now, for the first time, it was made amply clear that the chief heir, he who would lead the future generation, was not going to tread the path taken by his ancestors.
Dwarkanath had been aware, for some time, of the change that was coming over Debendra. Though he stayed away from Jorasanko for long periods, he kept a close eye on his family. What he saw disturbed him profoundly. He had pinned his hopes on his eldest son, the only one of his three surviving ones who had inherited some of his dynamism, capacity for hard work and administrative capabilities. And it was to him that he had looked to care for his vast estates and business interests and keep them together. But now it seemed as though he had chased an illusion. The other two boys were, to put it bluntly, worthless. Girindra was weak and timid and allowed himself to be guided by his wife which, perhaps, was just as well for she was a fine girl with strong family sentiments. The youngest, Nagendra, the spoiled darling of his mother, was a dandy and a profligate. He knew how to spend money like water but didn’t feel the slightest urge or need to earn it. Or even conserve it.
Dwarkanath felt frustrated and displeased. The efforts he had made, over a lifetime, were coming to naught and he was powerless to do anything about it. First his wife had let him down and now his sons. A wave of bitterness and self-pity swept over him. He felt unloved, abandoned. He took a decision. He wouldn’t think of them anymore. He would think only of himself. He remembered the months he had spent in England. What a wonderful country it was and how the people had admired and lionized him! He would go there again. Not only to England. He would visit Paris, Rome and other great capitals of the continent. Continental food, wine, theatre and opera were excellent. So were the women. He would spend as much money as his heart desired. He would steep himself in pleasures to the hilt.
But, try as he would, he could not dismiss his family completely from his thoughts. That his business interests were on the path of extinction was a fact that stared him in the face. But he could, possibly, save his inherited and self-acquired estates and secure them for his future generations. He decided to form a trust. Naming his half-brother Ramanath Tagore as one of the trustees, he drew up a deed the terms of which were framed so cleverly that even if all his business concerns – his indigo plantations, sugar factories, tea gardens and coal fields – went into liquidation, creditors could not lay claim to the zamindari in Dihi Sajadpur, Birahimpur pargana, Kaligram pargana and the taluks in Pandua and Balia of Orissa. Nor could they touch the family mansions of Jorasanko. He also made a will the terms of which were clear. The ancestral residence in No. 6 Dwarkanath Tagore Street was to go to his eldest son who was also to receive his father’s fifty per cent share in the Carr, Tagore and Company. No. 5 or Baithak Khana Bari, the house he had built, was left to Girindranath and the large tract of land that lay west of No. 6 to Nagendranath together with twenty thousand rupees to enable him to build a house on it.
And now Dwarkanath started making preparations for his journey to England. Just before his departure he called his eldest son and gave him strict instructions to send him one lakh of rupees every month – a sum so vast, it left Debendra dumbfounded.
Though he didn’t admit it, Dwarkanath was a little uncertain about his reception. Would it be like it was last time? What if it wasn’t? He decided to play the ‘exotic Ind’ card and keep the enchantment alive with lavish displays of wealth.
He needn’t have worried, for the ovations, wherever he went, were as grand, if not grander than before. In return for the courtesies he received, he hosted a reception in Paris so lavish – it was the talk of the city for months to come. Wearing shawls being the fashion with upper-class women, he had the walls of the salon in which the reception took place draped with exquisite jamawar shawls from Kashmir, one of which he presented to each lady at the time of her departure. These shawls caught the fancy of the Parisiennes to such an extent that within months the city was flooded with cheap imitations. Woven with the finest slivers of wood, jamawar – a craft of such delicacy and precision, it took the weaver months, sometimes years, to fashion one shawl – was now being churned out in hundreds on ordinary looms. Basking in the new name of French Paisley, its affordability enabled it to embrace the entire spectrum of middle-class society.
Dwarkanath may have had a premonition that this phase of his life was to be his last and, perhaps, that was why he felt no compunction in squandering away the vast fortune he had amassed so painstakingly. His heirs, he understood quite clearly, lacked the ability to keep it together. So why should he not enjoy it? But despite all the pleasures he devised for himself he was not at peace. He grew restless and short tempered. The climate of Bengal, he decided, was unsuitable to his health and he wished to make Europe his permanent home. So there was no question of his going back to take charge of his properties. But Debendra was leaving everything in the hands of the officials. What was more, he was tardy about sending him his monthly remittance. Dwarkanath dashed off angry letters to his eldest son, accusing him of neglecting the estates
and frittering away his time in useless religious debates and writing articles for newspapers. Which was true. More and more, Debendranath was withdrawing from his father’s world and creating one of his own.
II
Reared in the luxurious halls and apartments of the mansion of his forefathers, Debendranath had been the quintessential young babu of Kolkata till the age of twenty-one. Like his peers from the families of the Malliks of Hatkhola, the Singhas of Jorasanko, the Debs of Shobhabazar and the Dattas of Taltala, he was given to frittering away large sums of money on his pleasures. He loved pomp and spectacle and was quite the fop in dress. He wore brocade and velvet jobbas, and nagras embroidered with gems on his feet.
Then, gradually, a change started coming over him. It started on the night before his foster grandmother’s death. Aloka Sundari had been brought for her Ganga yatra – the last journey a Hindu undertakes – to the banks of the Ganga, after which the spirit is borne away on the holy waters straight to the other world. Debendra was sitting a little apart from the Brahmins who were chanting ganga narayan brahma over and over again in the dying woman’s ears, when he was suddenly assailed by a strange question which seemed to come from deep within him. What is the meaning of life? Debendranath was so disturbed by it that he kept awake all night.
He got his answer the next day. A few minutes before drawing her last breath, Aloka Sundari gazed on her eldest and best-loved grandson’s face and pointed to the sky. Life is only a preparation, she said to him without words. Death is the only reality and Heaven the only permanent refuge.
After the last rites were over, Debendranath took a decision. ‘I wish to give away all my things,’ he told his twelve-year-old wife Sarada. ‘All this…’ He waved his hand across the room lavishly appointed with gilded furniture, Persian carpets, paintings and tapestry.
‘All?’ Sarada turned large, dismayed eyes on her husband.
‘All.’ Debendra’s voice was inexorable. ‘What are material things worth, Bado Bou? Can they keep death at bay?’
‘Even the bed? Where shall we sleep?’ Sarada was in the throes of her first pregnancy and felt sleepy all the time.
‘A plain wooden chowki is good enough to sleep on if the body is weary and the mind free from disturbing thoughts. Won’t you share it with me, Bado Bou?’
‘I will… of course,’ Sarada said instantly. She was a loyal wife and adored her husband. ‘Whatever you say. But… but your clothes? Will you give them away too?’
‘Of course. I shall wear a homespun dhuti and chador like most of my countrymen.’
Sarada’s eyes filled with tears. She was so proud of her husband’s looks and sartorial elegance! Whenever he left the house, she ran to the window with one of her father-in-law’s lorgnettes in her hand to catch a last glimpse of him striding towards his carriage. What a splendid, handsome man he was in his puckered dhutis, satin vests and exquisitely embroidered shawls! She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him in homespun. The tears welled over and rolled down her cheeks. She wouldn’t have minded so much if she had been made to give up her saris and jewels.
Debendranath kept his word. He gave away all his possessions, keeping only the barest minimum. Yet he was assailed by dejection and melancholy. He knew that in realizing that the triumph of the body spelled death for the soul and vice versa, he had grasped only one half of the truth. He sought the whole; sought it desperately. He needed to find the path that led to the Eternal Calm and Eternal Joy that was God. In which direction was he to look? Who was God and where was he?
And so his quest began, a long harrowing quest that left him disenchanted and weary for the most part. Sometimes he thought he saw a glimmer of light. Then it was gone again…
One afternoon, Girindra’s wife Jogmaya and Nagendra’s wife Tripura Sundari came barging into their sister-in-law’s apartments. Sarada had just eaten a sumptuous lunch and was getting her hair aired and dried in preparation for her afternoon nap. She felt warm and comfortable and full of good food. The drumstick chachchari was sharp and spicy and exactly to her taste and the tiger prawns, steamed in coconut and mustard, so soft and succulent they had melted in her mouth. And now, the feel of Kalo’s fingers on her scalp was so pleasurable, her eyes were closing luxuriously.
Suddenly, Jogmaya’s voice came bursting into her eardrums. ‘Didi!’ she cried, her face red and agitated. ‘Have you heard what the brothers are planning to do?’
Jogmaya was a total contrast to her sister-in-law. Though second in the hierarchy of mistresses of the household, she was the one who looked to all the needs of the family. She was also an excellent mother – not only to her own children but to those of Sarada as well. Sarada’s frequent pregnancies and confinements had made her ease-loving and indolent and she found little time or motivation to nurture her brood. Consequently, they turned to their mejo kakima for motherly love and she gave it unreservedly. It was she who attended to their meals, settled their quarrels, told them stories and comforted them in their little trials.
Tripura Sundari was somewhat different. She had all the strength and energy of the barren woman and all her heartache. She also suffered from a deep-rooted complex regarding her looks. She was very plain, a startling contrast to her handsome, dashing husband who looked more like a gora than a native. Hard working and responsible, she bustled about tirelessly all day, taking on more than her fair share of the management and supervision of the household. But, though she received a lot of commendation, it failed to satisfy her. She felt peeved and disgruntled all the time.
Sarada sat up with an effort. ‘What is it?’ she asked, her words indistinct from a mouthful of paan. ‘What has happened?’
‘Our husbands have decided that the deities we worship are graven images and the Narayan shila just a piece of stone,’ Jogmaya said. ‘They are going to boycott all our pujas. Why, hasn’t Bado Thakur told you anything? It’s his idea.’
Debendra had, as a matter of fact, said something of the sort to Sarada but she hadn’t understood the implications and preferred to ignore it.
‘They’ve started a society called Tatwabodhini Sabha,’ Jogmaya continued, ‘in which they make speeches against the Hindu dharma. Your brother-in-law was telling me that Bado Thakur intends to merge Rammohun Raja’s Brahmo Sabha with it and begin a new religion called Brahmo Dharma which we all must follow. What is to become of us, Didi? To think that the presiding deities of our household, to whom we owe all our prosperity; our Lakshmi and Narayan, which our great grandfather-in-law carried on his head all the way from Pathuriaghata, through storm and wind, are to be thrown away and—’
‘Stop! Stop!’ Sarada stemmed the flow. Taking her spittoon from the maid, she sloshed a mouthful of bright-red betel juice into it. Then she said, ‘Have you forgotten that our father-inlaw is still alive? His sons may open as many sabhas as they like. But they’ll never have the courage to touch our deities.’
Jogmaya was somewhat mollified by this argument but not quite. ‘Didi,’ she said dolefully, ‘Sasur Thakur, may God grant him a hundred years, will not live forever. Then…?’
‘He’s strong and healthy and will be with us for a long time but…’ Shaking her head reflectively, Sarada added, ‘If it comes to that, we mustn’t forget that it is our duty as wives to follow in the footsteps of our husbands. We have to be sahadharminis, have we not?’
‘Even if it means abandoning the faith of our husbands’ ancestors?’
‘Even so.’
‘I don’t agree. Can I forget that our mother-in-law gave up her husband but not the dharma of the family? I shall leave no stone unturned to bring my husband back to the fold.’
‘Neither shall I.’ Tripura Sundari, who was silent all this while, echoed her sister-in-law’s words though she knew, as did everyone else, that she had no influence, whatsoever, over Nagendranath. Sarada snorted. References to her mother-in-law incensed her greatly. ‘Well,’ she said stiffly, ‘that’s up to you. As for me, I’m perfectly content to follow my hu
sband and obey him in all things. That’s what satis have done through the ages. Think of Sita! How she left the luxuries of her father-in-law’s palace and followed her husband into the forest. And Savitri and Behula who travelled all the way to the abode of the gods and brought their dead husbands back to life. As for our mother-in-law, the less said about her the better.’
Jogmaya and Tripura exchanged glances. The only comfort they could draw from the present situation was the thought that that their father-in-law was still strong and healthy and would live for many more years. ‘Let Sasur Thakur find out what his sons are up to,’ Jogmaya thought grimly. ‘He’ll put a stop to this nonsense soon enough.’
But their father-in-law was too far away to help. Physically they were seven seas apart and mentally he had withdrawn completely.
In his father’s absence, Debendra’s transformation was rapid. He had realized that keeping the Vedantic Hinduism of the Tatwabodhini Sabha and the monotheistic doctrine of the Brahmo Sabha separate was meaningless. So, the two were merged under the banner of a new religion, the Brahmo Dharma. Debendra and twenty other like-minded young men initiated themselves at the hands of Ramchandra Vidyabagish, the Acharya of Rammohun Roy’s Brahmo Sabha, and became the first Brahmos.
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